Te Araroa day 112 – Wanaka
March 24th 2017
Albert town - Wanaka
8.1 miles
Total distance: 1621.5 miles
Busy campsite equals lots of noise. People kept arriving in their cars late into the night, and not just hiker late but normal people late at around 1am. It's a different mindset, when you are just travelling around and you don't need to get up and walk every day so why would you need to go to bed early and get up early. I get that, but it still made it difficult to sleep, plus we were next to a noisy road.
It was really cold again and when 6:30am rolled in I heard Sandy and Colin rustling and decided to just get up. I was on the move at 6:57am. It was freezing, with a mist all around and it was still dark. I found my way to the trail and walked along the river by headlamp. Not creepy at all! I was bundled in all my layers and I decided to call home and spoke to my Mum for a while as I was walking.
Eventually the sun rose and it got slightly warmer, although not warm enough to delayer, but at last I could see where I was going. The walk was really pleasant, a nice stroll along the river which turned into walking alongside Lake Wanaka. Half way I caught up to Sandy and Colin and we walked the last part together. We headed straight for the New World and bought food to eat now which we took to the park to eat and make a plan for the next section. I did say to them if they want me to bugger off and leave them to finish up their hike on their own then I would, but they seem happy to have me around and we may see this thing through to the end together.
We ate coco puffs from our stove cups and then went to find a cafe to sit in. We found Markus on the way and we sat in the cafe for a few hours before going back to New World to resupply and buy food for the evening. I wasn't expecting much of Wanaka, I thought it may be like Lake Tekapo and be way too touristy, but it's a really nice town. Yeah there are still heaps of tourists but there is more normal life happening too.
Markus was in charge of the group meal which ended up costing us NZ$20 each!! That's expensive for a holiday park meal. I could have gone out, not had to cook or wash up for that price! Markus isn't allowed to be in charge of the food again, he bought enough to feed about 8 people! We walked to the holiday park which wasn't far but felt like miles with all our heavy shopping.
Worst holiday park yet. Filthy dirty. Crappy tent site. Filthy dirty. Did I mention how dirty it was? We set up our tents and there was a Kiwi girl there struggling to put up a tent she got from a charity shop. We tried to help her sort it out because the poles clearly didn't belong to the tent. It was now about a million degrees so I felt funny and had to sit in the shade for a bit so I left the boys to sort her out. After a shower and laundry and a bit of blogging we set about making our dinner.
It was very nice but Markus eventually conceded that he brought too much! Hugo, the French guy who we find out is only 19, arrived and we sat and chatted and had a nice evening. Unsurprisingly, with the amount of people here – a lot, and their age range – very young, it is a super noisy camp site and there are lots of parties going on by the sound of it.
